


Fools to Truth

by salienne



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-13
Updated: 2008-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salienne/pseuds/salienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU post-Last of the Time Lords. With the Master aboard the TARDIS, Rose and the Doctor must learn to coexist with the Time Lord who, for a year, destroyed their lives and the lives of all those on the planet below. A story about change and choices, about the growth of relationships and the unforeseen consequences our decisions can bring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU where Rose didn’t get trapped in Pete’s World. She (and Martha) were there throughout S3. Also, at the end of LotT, the Master isn’t shot.
> 
> Thank you [](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/profile)[**hippiebanana132**](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/) for betaing. You rock, girl!

He is placed in a holding cell that the TARDIS refuses to move any closer to the Doctor’s room. It is further still from Rose’s room—which, the Doctor says, she should start using again because it’s safer—and she pretends that it’s far enough for her to feel that way. She pretends it’s far enough for the hate she feels to die out, because really, he’s so distant that it’s almost as if he isn’t even there, right?

The first night, the Doctor doesn’t leave his side—at least, that’s the end result. Technically, he sits in the demolished console room attempting to piece together the jigsaw of what were once controls, but every once in a while he stops, listening to the thrum of a Time Lord just doorways away.

Rose, meanwhile, wanders in and out, mainly in. She tries to help. Jack stays on the bridge of the _Valiant_ , struggling to sort out the whole international mess and keep British and American, UN and UNIT, and even French forces away just until the Doctor makes the TARDIS mobile. There is a good deal of yelling and sadly little flirting involved, but somehow, even with his wrists still aching from the cuffs, he manages.

Martha sits with her family. She keeps an arm around Tish and smiles as her parents hold hands. Watching them she almost thinks it was worth it, and then her hold on her sister tightens; it’s at times like these she’s not sure who she hates more, the Master or herself.

The second night, they all come together for dinner, the “all” composed by Clive, Francine, Martha, Tish, Jack, and Rose. The Doctor is still in the TARDIS rebuilding the console—Rose plans to bring him a sandwich, some milk, and several bananas—and the Master is in his cell—Rose plans to bring him some cold mashed swede, but only because she knows the Doctor would be disappointed if the only other Time Lord in existence was forced to regenerate from hunger.

The gathering is oddly quiet, all things considered. Most of them have not seen one another for a year and the optimist in Rose expected relief-filled chatter, a hum of joy reminiscent of her first Christmas with her new-new Doctor. What she did not expect but what Martha and Jack had both foreseen was this tension, the way Tish and Francine stay quiet even as the latter glances at Rose disgustedly throughout. Martha and Jack and Rose try, Jack especially, and he makes them all chuckle, once or twice. Even Clive chips in, now and again.

But the whole time they remember whose food they’re eating, whose airship is carrying them, whose clothes they’re sitting in, the material tainted and chafing. In the back of every one of their minds is the thought of a sociopath in a little blue box and the man who put him there, and when Rose gets up, she is surprisingly happy to go. She shares a half-smile with Martha and her fingers are slow as they disentangle from Jack’s. As she walks to the kitchen to make the sandwiches—she’s not really going to give the Master swede, she can’t, because then the Doctor might protest or get angry or insist on eating that crud himself—she thinks she feels Francine’s glare on her back.

The Doctor tosses aside a piece of the Paradox Machine’s casing when she enters the TARDIS. The room is a mess, the Time Rotor still hidden beneath the Master’s additions, and there are great gaping holes in the floor, some full of metal and wires and others dark and empty. Parts of the ship, whole and broken, large and small, are scattered across the floor, and Rose has developed a habit of tripping at least once an hour. Since the TARDIS is operating at half-power, however, the Doctor still keeps the lights low, draping nearly every surface in green-tinted shadow. Even the Doctor, though standing, seems gaunt, but when he looks over and sees her and smiles, her worry nearly fades away.

Her own lips widening, though not as much as they once would have, Rose makes her way toward him. She moves up the ramp and onto the grating, stepping over tubes and what looks like bicycle parts. When she reaches him, she says nothing. She just extends her left hand, offering him a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a banana on a white plate. While not the healthiest of food choices, Rose assumes he needs the sugar right now. The Doctor seems to agree, because after one bite half the sandwich is gone.

“Oh, tha’s briyan’,” he says, his mouth full of mashed up brown and purple. “I wash _famished_.”

Rose hands him the bottle of water, which he promptly opens. “Should’ve joined us for dinner then,” she replies, even though she knows perfectly well why he couldn’t.

He goes to sit on his coat beside one of the few coral-like supports that, even with the cracks, doesn’t look dying or dead. Her heart aches for the ship, their home, as she goes to sit beside him, in the space he’s left her. The floor is hard and the room is too hot, still tinged with the odor of burning. All that’s left of the TARDIS’s hum is a wheeze and Rose can’t help but think that silence would almost be better.

Rose turns her head to breathe in the scent of her Doctor, and even though she is met with not much more than oil and metal and sweat, he is still here, right beside her, his thigh pressed against her knee, and it is all she can do not to throw her arms around him, bury her face in the crook of his neck, and never ever _ever_ let go.

The Doctor licks off his fingers, each one leaving his mouth with an audible smack, and kisses her on the forehead. “Aren’t you gonna eat yours then?”

For a moment she does not understand him—he’s right here, right _here_ , his skin pale and glowing in the dull green light, his freckles speckled across his cheeks like something for her to connect with her fingertips, his coat beneath her, his face just inches from hers—but then she realizes where his hand is motioning. She draws in a breath and turns her head away.

“I ate,” she says, her eyes on the second sandwich and water she has set on the grating. Suddenly the plate seems foreign to her, alien in a way the Daleks were, in a way the Toclafane were. “That’s for… that’s for _him_.”

She can hear it when he stops breathing. “Ah,” he says.

Before she can react, he has snatched up the plate and water and stood. Craning her neck to look up at him, she can’t believe he was ever this tall. “I’ll just take this to him, shall I? Should only be a tic.”

Then she’s on her feet, her hand gripping his arm, and the force of her anger surprises even her. “Hold on, no you’re not. I made that, I’m damn well gonna deliver it.” She holds out her hand.

He frowns, watching her, trying to understand why she would want to deliver it in the first place. Then the plate begins to drift, centimeter by centimeter, away from her. Rose curls her fingers around his wrist and he can’t quite shake her off without throwing the food down too. He gives her an annoyed, what’s-the-stupid-human-doing-now sort of look. “Rose, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not,” she replies. “I’m giving the Master his food.”

“Rose—”

“Rose what?”

He says nothing, just looks at her, almost pleading with those lovely, sad brown eyes of his. She loves those eyes.

Rose knows not to cross her arms because then he might escape. She raises her eyebrows instead.

“It’s dangerous,” he says.

“I’ve been through worse.”

But still he keeps looking at her, begging, worried, and still he does not renounce his hold on the plate or the bottle. Rose’s lips are set in a line, her eyes boring into his, and she does not even consider looking away. “He’s in a cell, Doctor,” she says. “He’s trapped, he can’t hurt me.” The Doctor stays silent, and she knows he’s thinking of all the ways the Master can do exactly that. “Doctor, if I’m gonna stay with you—and I _am_ gonna, I am—‘s not like I can just avoid him forever. Sooner or later I’m gonna run into ‘im, an’ I’d rather… I’d rather it was on my terms and not his.”

That, it seems, he understands, because something in him shifts then, something that makes his back tense, his shoulders square, his eyes narrow. His face becomes harder, the lines firmer, and this is a look Rose hasn’t thought about, hasn’t seen, for over a year. It is the look that tells her she has hurt him somehow, a look that tells her that he will not be hers again for a long, long time.

He hands over the food and she takes it. Though he is just a foot away, it feels as if he’s on the other side of the ship. Her eyes continue to meet his and she’s searching, looking for something, for anything, because she knows she’s made the right choice, she has, and it’s about time he faced what the Master did and how things are going to be now, and please, she thinks, _please_ let there be something there in his eyes, some understanding, because she has to do this if she’s going to live here, if he’s being this stupid and letting the Master live here, letting the Master live at all, she _has_ to, and since when has she been so _hard_?

Rose’s gaze shifts down to a dark, uneven hole in the grating. Just slightly, she nods. Without another look at the man she loves, she moves towards the entrance into the rest of the ship.

His voice comes as a surprise. “Be careful,” he says.

She looks back and smiles. “Always.”

~-~-~-~-~-~-

The plate clatters so loudly Rose is surprised it doesn’t break. She throws the bottle after it and it lands just past the sandwich, now oozing jam onto the carpet. It hits the floor with a muffled thunk and rolls to a stop by the foot of the bed.

There lies the Master, his ankles crossed, his hands folded beneath his head. He looks up at a ceiling with its three glowing panels and Rose can’t help but notice that the console room is dark and in shambles while the Master reclines in near-luxury, the lights on full. He looks at her over his feet. “Oh goodie,” he quips, “it’s the blond.”

“That’s your dinner,” she says. “I suggest you eat it.”

Her voice is low and, like her body, close to trembling. Walking here, she told herself it wouldn’t bother her, seeing him like this. She prepared herself, assured herself that just being locked up was a punishment, tried to convince herself that maybe Master had not ordered the particular Toclafane murders she’d witnessed. Maybe at least part of what she hated him for wasn’t his fault at all.

In the end, she was forced to stop one staircase away from his room, leaning against the cool wall as she took deep, slow breaths. It was then that she decided to pretend he was just some man she happened to dislike, to disassociate him from the things he’d done. She wouldn’t think about human beings crowded in rooms like rubbish or the sight of alien ( _human_ ) blades tearing apart countless men and women. She wouldn’t even think about Jack, tortured for a year, or her Doctor, aged until he looked like a gremlin. Even though she loathed the Master more than she would have ever thought possible, she would be calm. She would not yearn to beat him until he was covered in bruises. She would not yearn to hurl him into a black hole.

At that moment as she let the wall support her, Rose decided that she would, very calmly, place the plate and bottle down on the floor in front of his room. She would nudge it through the one-way barrier set in his doorway and step back. Then, she would cross her arms and, slowly, watch him through that invisible wall. Regardless of the hate in her veins, she would get used to him.

What Rose did not count on was what seeing him again would do to her. What she did not count on was the way the mere sight of him would make her want to scream.

Now he sits up slightly, looking over at the floor—conceivably at his food—before settling back down. His gaze is fixed on the ceiling. “Why don’t _you_?” he says. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Pick up the Doctor’s scraps? He tells you to roll over, you roll over, he says ‘walk the world’—”

“Shut up.”

Rose doesn’t know what it is, his voice or the words or a mixture of both, but the longer he speaks the more she yearns to walk over there, whether she can get out afterward or not, and wring his neck.

“Ooh, did I hit a nerve? Get a little close to the truth?” He sits up, his face almost at eye-level, and now Rose sees those eyes of his, brown like her Doctor’s but narrower, meaner. Just the face of some bloke on the street—he even has the tie on still—and the sight of him makes her fisted hands start shaking.

“Tell me, Rose Tyler, how well do you really know him? How much has he told you?” He puts his feet on the ground and, still facing her, stands. He takes one step, then another, another, toward her. “Did he tell you that he killed the Time Lords? Has he _cried_ to you about destroying Gallifrey? Pathetic isn’t it, when he does that? ‘ _Boo hoo_ , I’m so alone, _boo hoo_ , I killed our people, _boo hoo_.”

He stands right at the doorway now, just a few feet from her, and even though Rose knows he can’t get past that barrier, even though she knows the only way he can get her is for her to come through, she still steps back. “ _That’s_ who you walked the world for, Rose Tyler, _that’s_ who your precious race believed in.” He has been leaning in, his face and voice drawing her forward even as every word spurs the nausea in her throat, and now he straightens up, his gaze like grease, still focused on her.

Rose takes two steps forward, her worn shoes squeaking faintly as she moves. She stops right in front of that doorway—just a few more inches and he could touch her.

“You know,” she says, “you talk a hell of a lot for someone locked in a cage. ‘Cos that man you’re on about, the Doctor? He beat you. You lost. You lost, an’ we won. Now _you_ have to live with that.”

For several seconds, the Master does nothing, says nothing, his expression unchanging, his body still. Then he raises his eyebrows, smirks, and turns toward the bed. For a moment all she can see is the hair on the back of his head and Rose thinks he’s finished, thinks she’s finally triumphed. Then he speaks over his right shoulder. “Yeah, well, I shagged him first.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/profile)[**hippiebanana132**](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/) and lunaserenade for betaing!

One week and three days later, the TARDIS is ready to fly. The trips will be rougher, the Doctor tells Rose, and the showers might not have hot water sometimes—or, well, most of the time—but the old girl is up and running again. She can travel. She’s all right.

The words remain unsaid but understood: it is now time for them to leave.

Three hours before all but one of them sit down for dinner, Rose and the Doctor stand in front of the TARDIS, Martha and Jack just a few yards away. Around them is the room the ship has stood in for over a year now, dark and metal and gray. Yesterday Rose offered them a lift to the surface, Jack and Martha and all of her family, but they declined. Only Martha, however, admitted to the true reason why; with her family the way it is, attempting to hide their repulsion to the vessel that harbors the Master would be pointless.

For several long moments, the four of them simply stand there, two parallel forces watching one another through the silence. Recognizing the ridiculousness of this almost-standoff, Rose steps forward, leaving the Doctor behind her thinking about the man still inside the TARDIS. The first words are spoken by Jack.

“Admit it,” he tells Rose, “I’m better looking.”

Grinning, Rose has an urge to look back at the Doctor and compare. Instead, she and Martha exchange a glance before she turns back to Jack and, very slowly, runs her eyes down his body, examining him from the styled hair to the broad chest to the black boots and back up. With a finger tapping against her chin, she replies, “Depends. Who am I comparing you to? ‘Cos Owen maybe. Ianto, no way.”

At first Jack’s smile wavers, his eyes narrowing in confusion. Then he remembers: before the two of them parted ways, Martha and Rose ran into his team, newly returned from the Himalayas. At the time, Owen was apparently rather rude. Gwen hadn’t survived.

“You’re kidding me, Ianto?” he says. “Have you _seen_ his legs?”

“’Fraid not,” she replies. “Did see him without his shirt though. Great abs.”

“Aren’t they?”

The moment Jack stops speaking, Rose moves the rest of the way forward, pulling him in for a hug so deep that she is almost lost in his coat, so final that, for them, the seconds pass only in the beating of hearts and the warmth of human skin and the rustling of the cloth that covers it. Martha moves away to provide some privacy and to address the Doctor, but the two of them hardly notice. Her face buried in the crook of Jack’s neck Rose breathes in deeply, the musky detergent-tinged scent almost as comforting as the stubble-coated skin against her cheek.

She’s going to miss this, yet another year apart and she’s going to miss him so damn much.

Rose speaks into the lapels of his coat. “Awful lot we never got to say to each other, you an’ me.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, his arms tightening around her. “Hell of a lot.”

Beneath her lids Rose can feel her eyes heat up and sting. She pinches the muscles tight and takes several deep breaths, straining to keep the moisture off her cheeks and his coat. It’s bizarre—for months and months on the surface she did not cry a single time, but now that everything below has healed she has already broken down twice, once in the Doctor’s arms and once now. She keeps hold of Jack and he her until she has calmed, and then she pulls away. Quickly she runs the back of her hand across her eyes, suddenly conscious of Jack’s gaze and the two voices behind her. Then she looks up at him and, without planning it, speaks.

“You can still come with us, Jack,” she says earnestly. “The Doctor won’t mind, even with him here.” She has an urge to reach out and grab his arm; she takes hold of her own wrist instead, picking at the skin. Her eyes bore into his. “Come with us.”

He is tempted. Hearing the words he has dreamt of for over a century, of course he’s tempted, but when he responds, he only states, very simply, “I can’t.” Rose does not reply, just looks at him with a sort of blank acceptance, so he continues. “Rose, I had a lot of time to think that past year, the Year That Never Was.” He turns his head up, letting the words hang in the air, and when he brings his chin back down her expression mirrors his, an altogether bitter smile. Something in him twinges at the sight; he never thought he’d see his Rose looking like that. “My team, they need me down there,” he tells her. “You and the Doctor… don’t.”

Rose’s first reaction is to protest, but in the end her lips don’t even part to form the words. She has heard this accusation so many times now, even lived it when first torn apart from Jack, then Mickey, then her mother and now Martha. Now Jack for a second time. What he says is true, it has probably always been true, but just because they don’t _need_ anyone else doesn’t mean Rose doesn’t crave the company of someone who is not the Doctor now and again, someone who understands and someone who is not a Time Lord—someone who, most importantly, is not obsessed with healing the latest occupant of the TARDIS, an occupant who is already leading her to distrust so much.

“You’ll be fine,” Jack tells her, reaching forward to cup her face. “And maybe someday, years from now…” He breaks off, thinking about how he’ll still be around then, thinking about how she probably won’t. “You take care of yourself, Rose,” he says, “and if you need me, hell, even if you don’t, call. Lots of things you can do with a phone.”

Her eyes almost dry, Rose reaches up and puts her hand on his. “I bet there are.”  
For a long moment their eyes continue to meet, and then she steps forward and kisses him on the cheek. “You take care of yourself too, yeah?” she says, pulling away. “I heard what you an’ Torchwood get up to. You need anything, seriously anything, you ring.”

He nods. “Captain’s honor.”

“Best one I’ve ever known.”

They smile at one another, and Rose reaches forward to squeeze his hand. “I’ll miss you, Jack,” she says, her voice not quite steady.

“Goodbye, Rose,” and it is obvious he has had far more practice veiling his emotions than she.

He moves to stand beside her and she turns. Together, they watch Martha and the Doctor finish the conversation that began when she and Jack embraced.

\---

When Martha first walks up to the Doctor, he is still leaning back against the TARDIS doors, his hands in his pockets, his blue suit blending in with the wood behind him. He smiles at her approach.

“You know it’s weird seeing you like this, after all this time,” Martha says. “It’s like… I dunno, but here you are an’ here’s the TARDIS and, God you’ve even still got the suit.” Stopping before him, her hands in constant motion at her sides, she almost laughs. “I’m gonna miss you, Doctor.”

“Oh don’t talk like that,” he answers. “It’s not like I’m going away forever.”

“Aren’t you though?”

Immediately, the Doctor’s expression flattens out, his gaze shifting downward. Martha has an urge to apologize, to release him from that truth and bring some glimmer of joy back to his eyes, but she dismisses it. “Now you watch yourself, you got that?” she says, poking him in the chest and forcing him to look at her again. “Especially with… especially with _him_ , be careful, please. ‘Cos I know how much you want this but—”

“Martha.”

His expression is dark, his voice a clear warning, but she pushes on.

“If something doesn’t feel right, be careful,” she tells him. “Please, all I’m asking. Just be careful.”

Initially, she isn’t certain that he’s even going to acknowledge her words. She watches him stand there, his arms at his sides but so still, just like the rest of him so tense and still, and again he doesn’t face her but focuses on some spot down and to her right. His face is gaunter than she remembers, the pale violet hollows beneath his eyes emphasized by the down-turned angle of his face, the poor lighting, and the blue of his suit. He is so thin and worn, practically huddled, and for perhaps the first time Martha feels as if he is fading. She hasn’t noticed these past few weeks, not when he spent all his time in the TARDIS and she spent most of hers with her family, but now she sees what this past year has cost him. That vibrancy, maybe even that charisma—if she weren’t ( _still_ ) so in love with him she would think it had all disappeared.

Martha yearns to move forward and pull him into a hug or, better yet, shake him until he realizes how stupid he’s being, until he gives the Master up, because while she realizes how much he thinks he needs the other Time Lord, she knows this decision can’t lead to anything good. What the Doctor needs is not someone else to care for but to care for himself, to just have a good cry and sip some tea and talk to someone. And the ideal person for that is Rose. Long ago Martha realized that she would never mean as much to the Doctor as her co-companion, but she has come to terms with that. She is even glad of it now; her family needs her, and that added responsibility is not something she thinks she could take on.

But she still cares about him, he is one of her dearest friends and she cares about him perhaps more than she should, and right now all she wants is for him and Rose to be safe.

The Doctor looks up. “I know how to handle him, Martha,” he says. “We’ll be fine.”

Although she doesn’t exactly believe him, not after what she’s seen this past year, Martha doesn’t argue. She has never been one to doubt the Doctor’s abilities, and if he says he can keep himself safe with the Master on board, then he will. He must. Whether or not he’s capable, it’s something he and Rose will have to do.

Martha replies, “All right.”

Although she and the Doctor were almost always able to talk about science and history and sometimes even her family and Gallifrey, the silence between them is all too familiar and, somehow, all the more disappointing for that. Staring at his mauve tie Martha has an urge to just walk away once and for all, to be done with it, but the moment she looks back at his face she remembers how much he means to her. There is only one thing to do: unwilling to hold herself back any longer she moves forward, and the hug he sweeps her up in is so familiar that, before they have even parted, she can feel the ache of its loss.

“Thank you, Martha,” he tells her, his mouth by her ear, and both of them know that while the words themselves mean almost nothing, they express more than anything else he could say.

She begins to step back and the Doctor releases her. “Now Rose has got my number,” she says, forcing her voice to be steady. She and Jack have discussed this, and they have decided that if they remind both of them, Rose at least will keep in touch. “If that rings, when, you better come running, got it? ‘Cos I’m not havin’ you two disappear.”

“It’s a promise,” he answers, and before she can push the thought away Martha wonders if it is a promise he will keep.

“Good,” she answers, her fading smile the only sign of her doubt. Then, quietly, more to herself than him, she repeats the word. “Good.”

\---

The switch between partners is almost comical. Martha looks back and sees Rose and Jack, the latter of whom shoots her a large grin before walking in her direction. Martha doesn’t look back as they pass one another and neither does he. There are things to say and the two once-companions plan on saying them; the Master’s solitary presence aboard the TARDIS is not going to take even that away, no matter how dangerous every second he is left alone might be.

For Jack, a conversation of this magnitude can begin in only one way: “Doctor,” he says, “one thing never changes. You’ll always look good in a suit.”

The Doctor doesn’t laugh, he can’t when he is outside the TARDIS and the only other Time Lord in existence is inside, when he is terrified of what the Master might do and, for very different reasons, can hardly bear to be away from him. He certainly can’t when there are all these goodbyes to be said. No, the Doctor doesn’t laugh, but he does smile. He does respond with, “Now don’t start.”

“What, not even with you?” Jack counters. “And here I thought you were just jealous.”

“Oh always. I could never get tired of you, Jack.”

“Bet I could fix that.”

The Doctor raises both eyebrows and Jack grins in response. Both know these words mean nothing, both know that Jack could twist them into deserved barbs against the Doctor as effortlessly as gasping back to life. But they have come to an understanding this past year, not the camaraderie they once had but something close. While the exact words they say don’t matter, the manner in which they say them, the fact that they can joke and flirt without bitterness or hostility rumbling beneath, that is what matters. Although the Doctor knows Jack resents him for harboring the Master—they all do, even Rose—at least something of their friendship remains intact.

“Doctor,” Jack says, and he has turned serious now, his voice quiet but insistent, “I’m going to say something and you’re not gonna want to hear it, so just be quiet and listen. The Master’s dangerous. He’s dangerous and he’s deadly and you know that, so you be careful, not just for your sake but for Rose’s. She’s your responsibility too now, remember that.”

The Doctor says nothing—what is there to say, besides that he knows and Martha’s already warned him, thanks, and he’s almost a millennium old now and he doesn’t need this from every human who happens to care. And, yes, he is well aware that he shouldn’t be dragging Rose into this whole mess, especially not Rose, but she insisted and he’s selfish, he’s always been selfish, and some fundamental part of him is not willing to let her go again.

Despite himself the Doctor feels his gaze drawn in her direction, to the spot by the door where she and Martha stand talking. He sees the shift of her shoulders beneath the blue top, once her favorite, now loose on her; he sees her blond hair, haphazardly bleached and cut three days ago, extending just past her neck; he sees her there with Martha who looks just as tough as she ever did, and all he can think is, these two women walked the world for him. They suffered and their friends suffered and even Martha’s family suffered for him, and now Rose is going to be trapped with the man who, with the Doctor’s help, destroyed so many lives and almost stole hers away.

And even with that danger, the Doctor knows he could never surrender the Master. One Time Lord left, a Time Lord who was once his friend, and if he ever had to choose the Doctor is terrified that he does not know whom he would pick.

With his hands in his pockets the Doctor turns back to Jack; he nods, a quick jab of his chin. Knowing this is the best response he’s going to get, Jack examines the Doctor’s face, tracing the lines and clenched jaw, daring those deep brown eyes to look away.

He breaks out in another grin.

“Good,” he says. “Now that’s outta the way, do I get a kiss goodbye?”

As always, the Doctor recovers just as quickly. “You never got me that drink.”

“Working on it.”

Uncharacteristically, Jack hesitates, and for a moment neither man knows what he’s going to do. Then like a true soldier he straightens, and with his coat rustling around his calves and his face somber, Jack salutes. His neck and arm and hand rigid, he waits. Without any of the same formality but with just as much respect, the Doctor returns the motion. The moment his own arm drops, Jack begins to turn, and just as quickly he turns back.

“And what about me?” he asks, his voice once again quiet and hidden from Rose. “Can you fix that? Will I ever be able to die?”

“Nothing I can do,” the Doctor answers. “You’re an impossible thing, Jack.”

Not surprisingly, Jack smiles. “Been called that before.”

Time passes, just the ticking of a clock or the beats of a drum, and neither man’s eyes leave the other’s.

“Goodbye, Doctor,” Jack says.

“Goodbye, Captain.”

Still several feet away from the Doctor, Jack turns to face the two speaking women. Without another word, they wait.

\---

At first, there are so many moments to remember and conversations to have that neither Martha nor Rose can utter a word. It is as if the weight of the past two years has collapsed onto them, overriding every synapse and syllable. Their shared histories are a jumble, a mess of jealousy and rivalry and sipping strawberry daiquiris on Martha’s floor, of giggling over time-appropriate outfits or playing draughts to forget the nightmares or curling up together on that first day on the surface, staring at the blurred image of the Vortex Manipulator and wondering what the hell they were supposed to do now.

Both remember that first week under the Master’s rule, cowering in the woods and clinging so tightly to their TARDIS keys that Rose’s palm was imprinted. They slept in shifts, when they could sleep, and every moment spent in relative silence was a moment when they tried so hard not to imagine every little thing the Master could be doing to Martha’s family, to Jack, to an aged and helpless Doctor. Every moment was a moment spent wondering whom the Toclafane had slaughtered now.

They only stayed together three months down below, unwilling to lose someone else just yet, but that time is like a brand, scorched into their minds.

And then perhaps most bizarrely is the Doctor, always the nexus of everything, the Time Lord who brought them together and, by stealing those private moments with Rose, by commending cleverness and needing them both in different ways, drove them apart.

Neither Rose nor Martha knows how to get past this barrier of the past. Neither woman knows what she can possibly say that will be worth a damn thing.

Laughing nervously, Rose glances down, and Martha follows suit. “You were brilliant down there,” Rose says. “That gun thing, I never would’ve thought of it by myself.”

“Yeah you would’ve,” Martha replies, “though maybe not the five parts.”

Again the two are silent, but now that words have been found the quiet is suddenly comfortable, almost welcome.

One trip, Rose thinks, it was just supposed to be one trip for Martha—if they had stuck to that plan then maybe she would still be an oblivious medical student; then maybe not one member of her family, not Tish or Francine or Clive or Martha herself, would have had to endure or now remember all that pain.

And the best and worst part is, she and Martha are probably better for it. So many people suffered—are still suffering—because of what the Master did, but the two of them have seen the worst of horrors and survived. All alone, they walked hundreds and hundreds of miles, giving out nothing but words and hope, and now Rose knows she can make it by herself and still believe, knows that she can keep going even when her throat burns from thirst and her legs are shaking from the effort and the cold.

Rose has learned just how much she is capable of, and no doubt Martha has as well, but at such a high cost it is hardly worth it.

“God, it’s gonna be weird without you in the TARDIS,” Rose says. “Who’s gonna steal my shampoo or find the perfect spot to hide the Doctor’s Converse?”

“Yeah,” Martha agrees. “Tish stealing my tops just won’t be the same.”

At this, Rose sobers. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask. Are they…?”

“About the same,” Martha replies. “They were with the Master all year, it’s gonna take a while for them to recover.”

“Yeah.”

Rose doesn’t ask about Martha’s well-being—she knows. She reaches out and, gently, squeezes Martha’s arm.

“An’ I’m sorry about my mum,” Martha continues. “Just with everything that’s happened and the Doctor keepin’ him al—well with the Doctor keeping him…”

With a shake of her head, Rose cuts her off. “Don’t even worry about it. My mum’d probably be throwin’ a fit if she was here.”

Martha’s lips are quirked in a very familiar smile as she responds, “So I’ve heard.”

It is impossible to tell who moves forward first, but the hug is warm and tight and comforting. Too many times during the past year their goodbyes have been rushed and incomplete, marked by nightfall or the whir of metal spheres or the growl of a wild dog. Proper farewells, the kind Rose got with Mickey and Martha sought during her final week of A-Levels, seem like a precious commodity now.

Rose is once more on the verge of tears as she steps back. “You take care of yourself,” she says. “Don’t forget about yourself in all that family.”

“You too,” Martha responds. “Don’t go forgetting about yourself in all that Doctor.”

Initially Rose just nods, but when she bursts into laughter it does not take long for Martha to do the same.

“Something tells me we’ve been spending too much time around Jack,” Martha manages, her giggles dying down into the occasional snort.

“Tell me about it.”

Both glance towards the TARDIS, finding the Doctor and Jack watching them. Neither man has the decency to turn away.

Bringing her attention back to Martha, Rose says, “You call me, yeah? TARDIS or not, I wanna hear all about how the big bad doctor’s doing.”

“Same goes for you,” Martha replies. “You need anything, you call.”

“Definitely.”

Another look between them, shorter this time. Rose runs her fingers back through her hair, terrified of this moment ending, and Martha just stands there, none of her pounding heart showing in her face. She has always been more self-contained than her blond counterpart, and right now Rose envies that more than anything else.

“Bye, Rose,” Martha says quietly.

“I’ll see you later,” Rose responds.

The two walk the short distance to the TARDIS together, but although Jack greets them and although the two women exchange incredulous glances as the Doctor deactivates the Vortex Manipulator, it already feels like something has splintered. More goodbyes are said, final words and final warnings and repeated pleas to call and be careful, and then the Doctor walks into the TARDIS, where solitude and the Master wait. Right before she shuts the door behind them, Rose can’t resist one last look back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/profile)[**hippiebanana132**](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/) and [](http://lunaserenade.livejournal.com/profile)[**lunaserenade**](http://lunaserenade.livejournal.com/) for betaing!

They stand at the console, Rose watching the screen and the Doctor with his hand on the lever that will take them away. On the screen is an image of Martha and Jack, standing as grim and still as if they were paying their final respects. Rose isn’t certain whether the Doctor has set the screen to surveillance on purpose, but she does know that only she is looking at it. The Doctor’s attention is fixed on her.

Her gaze flicks to the door, beyond which her friends stand, and then she turns back to the screen, to their distant fuzzy image. Jack learns in towards Martha, no doubt saying something, and she smiles. He straightens, and they continue to wait. 

“Ready?” the Doctor asks.

Although his voice is quiet, patient, Rose knows he is eager to leave. The way his fingers clench and unclench, the tight set of his shoulders—these things give him away. She remembers the absent-minded way he used to pull that lever, hardly glancing at it as he told her about the first ever Milky Way Marathon or as they howled to the ceiling, another monarch saved. She remembers how they would argue about this or that prison cell or curl up on the plush library couch, the Doctor apparently incapable of letting her figure out an Agatha Christie novel on her own.

Eternity and laughter and a hand in hers—she yearns for that, of course she does, they both do. But she has yet to spend a full day aboard the reclaimed TARDIS, she has yet to discuss this past year with the Doctor, and now the Master sits just a few halls away. The Master, the man who caused all this, the man who slaughtered billions and tortured Jack and Martha’s family and the Doctor himself for a _year_ , is just doorways away, and Rose can’t help but think that, even with time reversed, that life of theirs might be gone forever.

But Rose has always been good at hope. Hope is what first drew her to this life, a pulse in the back of her mind that pushed her away from the Estate and the shop and into the TARDIS, that kept her running through the stars at the Doctor’s side. Every loss—her first Doctor, her mother, and then even the safety of the Earth—they couldn’t rip it away from her. This past year, even when she saw the Doctor aged and aged and aged, even when she learned of Shareen’s death, even when she _tried_ to give up because it was just easier that way, she couldn’t.

Somehow, some fundamental part of her has always known that things get better, they always do, they have to, and now that everything has turned out so close to the way she envisioned, Rose is not about to let the Master take even that away. Rose is not about to let him take anything away from her ever again.

She nods. “Let’s go.”

One jerk of the Doctor’s arm and the TARDIS jolts with it, every surface trembling with the Time Rotor’s grinding. The noise is like an earthquake through time, like what she imagines her father’s footsteps at her doorway would have been, and the warmth that spreads through her is something that surprises even her.

Just as it always has, the TARDIS fades not-quite-peacefully into the Vortex and Rose turns her head, smiling widely at the Doctor. In his peripheral vision he notices the gesture, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkles as he grins back. Only when the TARDIS is calm again, the strange inertia of flight through the Vortex making it seem as if the ship sits patiently on some street corner, does Rose remember to look back at the screen.

It is a dark blue, decorated by the round alien symbols she long ago deduced were Gallifreyan. Even in this newly rebuilt console room with the man she loves standing beside her, she feels her smile fade.

“So where to now?” she asks, turning to him. Putting a grin on her face until something real follows is a trick she learned from him long ago, and although she has no doubt grown rusty, this past year was not entirely devoid of opportunities for the skill.

The Doctor just looks at her, his expression guilty, almost sad. “Rose,” he begins.

“Oh,” she says. “Right. Sorry.” She looks down at her hand, tanned dry skin pressed against the console. “Do you wanna go see him,” she asks, “tell him we left?”

Around them, the TARDIS’s hum doesn’t change, not for a moment, and the Doctor is much the same. Very simply, he states, “He knows.”

Rose says nothing; like him, she doesn’t move. She keeps her gaze focused on her hand, seeing nothing but walls and trees and people closing in to hear her, faith in their eyes, until her attention is drawn to the only visible sign in this room that anything has changed. There beneath the base of her thumb is a thin ridge of skin that is pinker and more reflective than the area around it. Without her explicitly willing it, her left hand drifts over, the fingers tracing the dry rough flesh. It is such a small mark, this scar, such a tiny reminder of the things she and others were forced to do in a world where so many died.

Seeing this, the Doctor remembers all the other places on her body where traces of danger remains, that spot on her calf where no hair grows after the burn and her cries for him to help her, the three spots on her abdomen that the dermal regenerator couldn’t fully remove. He sees her fingers trace this new scar and he knows where it came from, he wonders what else she must have gone through for him—but though he yearns to draw her to him, the Doctor is not the sort of man who can hold her close and tell her that everything will be all right. Not now.

What he is very good at, however, is thinking, and even though they can’t visit the fifth moon of Nashnu 4 or go skating across the rings of New Spain, he realizes there is still one thing he can do for her. There is still a way of reassuring Rose that, even after this past year and even with them all now stuck aboard the TARDIS, some things haven’t changed at all.

He leaps away from her and Rose’s head snaps up. Silently she watches him dash around the console, grinning and exclaiming and even jumping as if this is just another trip to some concert or coronation. His fingers rush across a row of switches, his hands move and flex in set and deliberate and chaotic patterns, the mallet clangs against more than a few choice spots on the console, and for a moment, it is as if a year hasn’t passed at all.

The Doctor bounds about the room, every step and sweep of his arm so flourished and frenzied she is still surprised he doesn’t crash into anything. Rose feels her heart beat faster, as if straining to keep up with him.

His head turned downward, hands scrabbling over controls, the Doctor peeks at her from beneath his fringe. “I know,” he declares, “I know just the thing! Don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.”

A few more switches flipped, one right after the other, and then he lunges across the controls to press a button that dings. He pulls back, twists a dial, his brow momentarily furrowing in concentration. Between them the Rotor begins to move again, rasping out the rhythm of travel, and the TARDIS twists, tipping them both to the right.

“Mind you, not ideal,” he continues. “No disaster to thwart, civilization to save, not even a chocolate biscuit. You know it’s been ages since I’ve had a biscuit? Honestly, 391 days now. Biscuits in space, now that’d be an idea. Could make a movie, or a soap, or better yet, a restaurant. Fabulous little restaurant, on one of those little moons no one ever thinks about. Flying by in your shuttle? The kids restless on board? Stop by an’ grab a bite to eat, just enough chocolate to reenergize you for the road. Well, not road so much as big empty region of space, but you get the idea. The Silurians—I ever tell you about them, the Silurians? Lovely bunch, voices like music, love chocolate. Shame about the ears. But they, they would love that.”

The Doctor is right beside her now, pulling the screen close, his body brushing against hers almost accidentally. The controls sit before him untouched as he examines the twisting symbols, and the TARDIS lurches sharply, throwing her into him. He grins, nudging her in the bicep, and that one smile dissipates her worries about the TARDIS’s ability to make this journey. That one smile excites her just as much as the floor shaking beneath her feet.

Grabbing onto his shoulder for support, Rose says, “What, are we goin’ to a biscuit shop in the sky then?”

If it weren’t for the way she smiles, her head cocked with her tongue poking out from between her teeth, she would almost seem serious.

The Doctor fixes her with a confused look, his brow crinkling. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Before she can respond, the Doctor steps to the right, runs his hand four times across the time scroller and pulls the final lever. Rose realizes they have arrived the exact moment her bum hits the floor, jarring her tailbone, and the Doctor lands right beside her. An exchanged glance, familiar and intimate, and then the two burst into laughter, rolling back on the cool grating until Rose’s stomach aches. Her hand smacks his arm, grips, and then he leaps up, tugging her to her feet. Around them the TARDIS hums, pleased or perhaps indifferent, but the sound is so familiar that as they rush towards the doors Rose feels that same elation rising in her chest, a tightness demanding to be set free.

When they reach the bottom of the ramp the Doctor whirls them around, giving her the opportunity to push open the doors. Her hand is tight on the handle and she turns her head back, meeting eyes that are warm and bright and youthful even with the new shadows underneath.

Suddenly the urge to throw her arms around him and snog him senseless seizes her, but with some new time or place or adventure—always an adventure—right outside those doors for the first time in months, Rose resists. Her hold on the handle tightens.

“What’s out there?” she breathes.

His voice is quiet. “Open the doors and see.”

Rose does not need further prompting. One push of her hands and the doors swing open.

It is a miracle she remembers to breathe.

There, right in front of her, so close her exhalations might fuel it, so bright her eyes throb and water, is nothing but fire. Endless, vivid fire that should be devouring her flesh but isn’t, an endless blaze that should be reducing her and the Doctor and even the TARDIS into ash.

This fire, like thousands upon thousands of entities it writhes, the blues and pinks and oranges leaping out like tendrils, fluid and mighty, splashes of escape, until they return to a sea of yellow and white. There is no rest in this dance, no pattern or calm or even sense. Everywhere a new being rises, is suspended, and falls back. Everywhere, something is created or consumed, driven by the will of a core so powerful that it must hardly notice her, something she and the Doctor could tumble into without making so much as a dent in those flames.

Her eyes have adjusted and she can make out darker spots now, shadows that are still brighter than any lamp or beacon or moon that she has ever seen. It is easier to watch these somehow, to follow these stains of darkness that shudder and condense as if stolen from the airless space around them, trapped and lost.

So much motion, so much twisting and sinking and so many sputtering fingers reaching her way, pulling her in, and somehow, it is silent.

Somehow, this fire blazes unheard.

“Rose Tyler,” the Doctor says, stepping forward so that his front and her back are almost touching, “welcome to SN-3956, the siren star more commonly known as Aphrodite’s Lyre. In one thousand years the Pellushi will build a solar system here, one of the mightiest civilizations of this galaxy for a billion years. Imagine that, a _billion_ years. Your heart, beating dozens of times every minute of every day for _twenty-two years_ , has yet to manage that. And do you know what they’ll name this system, Rose?”

Her eyes fixed on the celestial display before her, Rose shakes her head, her every sense overwhelmed. She feels like she’s drowning, like she should be enveloped in light and fire, like taking just a few steps forward would mean nothing. This sight—no, more than just a sight, more than something safe and static atop a canvass or flickering across the screen. This star, this burning Lyre, is something real, something enormous and magnificent and impossible and _real_ ¸ and Rose can feel insignificance and awe battling within her. She feels like a speck of dust drawn forward by a hurricane, she feels like this star has swallowed her whole even as she stands safe aboard the TARDIS.

And it’s amazing.

“They’ll name it…” He leans forward, his cheek brushing her hair, his voice a whisper that tickles the shell of her ear and brings her back to him. “The Scarlet System.”

To this point the Doctor’s words have drifted over her, just barely grazing the surface of her mind. Yet she understands him, as she has always understood him, and when she hears this last statement her head turns, just slightly; but she cannot bear to tear her eyes away from the star.

Noticing her movements, the Doctor closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around her, and only now at its fading does Rose realize just how terrified she has been. She would not give up seeing this star, not for anything, but she’s never quite gotten used to this, to being so tiny and bearing witness to something so immense. The Doctor’s presence, the Doctor’s touch, it anchors her. She feels the pressure of her heels against the ground, his touch nearly warm against her back and waist, and her breathing slows. Her heart slows. Safe now, she is able just to watch.

With his head beside hers, the Doctor can feel her wonder and her joy, her fear and, somehow, her calm. He can feel something he long ago admitted was love, all seeping out from her skin, and not for the first time he is amazed at her ability to face the universe and not run away. Rose Tyler amazes him, and as much as his own weakness terrifies him, if he ever lost her for good, he does not know what he would do.

“This is that same system, Rose,” he tells her, “the very one we saw devoured right above our heads by a black hole. And here it is, on the cusp of birth, before a single planet spins in its orbit. For you and me it could stay like this… forever.”

Rose draws in a breath, letting the enormity of that statement, and the almost-truth of it, settle down around them. This is life with the Doctor, the life she has missed for a year: the ability to go anywhere, experience anything, and stay for as long as they wish—or, more often, as long as they are wanted or needed. For something like this they could come back over and over again, and when the timelines become too strained they could visit somewhere similar, somewhere nearly identical, a place where the differences are something to hunt for and relish all over again.

This is life with the Doctor, an almost perfect freedom, a science he will never admit is more like magic than the atoms and formulas and differing anatomies that lie underneath. It is running and laughing and interfering and just taking a moment to watch, a moment to breathe it all in. Quite often it is also death and responsibility, screams and punishment and enemies best forgotten, but not right now.

Right now it is just the Doctor and Rose and one of the many miracles of the cosmos before them, and as they stand there with their bodies pressed together, a star burning into eternity before them, neither one could wish for anything else.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/profile)[**hippiebanana132**](http://hippiebanana132.livejournal.com/) for betaing!

The next week and a half is calm and uneventful, broken only by phone calls or the television chatter Rose uses to fill those ( _frequent_ ) stretches of time when the Doctor is with the Master, somewhere she cannot be. During occasions such as these she stays in small rooms with doorways but no door, providing a clear view of any approach. The rooms themselves serve a similar purpose, light flooding every curve and corner, furniture made of glass or plastic or pressed flat against the walls. Perhaps most importantly, something loud must play in the background: the scattered rhythm of action movies or a speakerphone crackling by her palm. Even Shareen and the baby—anything to drown out the creaks and sputterings that mark a ship’s silence.

After a year on the run, every spare sound is the Master escaping, the Master sabotaging, the Master winning all over again.

Rose and the Doctor do not sleep in the same room anymore, not that the Doctor has ever slept much, but every night he is there when she goes to bed. A little over half the nights they make love, a little less than half the nights they don’t, but every time he is there, his body cool and comforting as he wraps himself around her, their foreheads pressed together or his arms tight around her waist. Perhaps he senses her inability to relax in the dark, even here, or perhaps he just wants to be with her. Maybe both. Either way, it is at times like this that Rose knows he missed her just as much as she missed him.

It is strange, then, that already one of them wanders the halls, a nervous energy behind every step. Just eleven days, and Rose finds herself wondering what it must be like for their prisoner, trapped within the same four walls for days and weeks and years. Just eleven days, and her every other thought is that of the console room shaking and a fresh new world right outside those doors.

“So, what’ll it be today?” the Doctor asks, waking her by plopping down on the end of her bed. “Movie? Swimming? Spelunking? Stargazing? Oh, better yet!” He splays himself out beside her, placing his face just inches from hers as she squints at him through a veil of tangled blond hair. “A picnic! Sandwiches and scones and tea on one o’ those checkered blankets, I have one of those in an attic somewhere, got it from Samuel Clemens himself. Well, his daughter. Same difference. Oh, and the lemonade! Can’t forget the lemonade, what’s a summer picnic without lemonade?”

He puts his hand on her hip, slides it up to tickle her side through the covers. She squirms and smacks him away half-heartedly, and he grins even wider.

“How ‘bout it?” he continues. “Some brunch on a blanket as your solar system bursts into being before us?” From the way he stresses the words, it is obvious he enjoys alliteration a little more than a 900-year-old Time Lord perhaps should. “The TARDIS can speed events up just like it did with the Earth on Christmas day.” He pauses—Rose wonders if he’s finally taking a breath. “What d’you say?”

A web of sleep still clinging to her thoughts and eyelids, she continues staring. She blinks. “You-you wanna picnic?”

“Is that a yes?”

Shoving herself into a sitting position, she runs a hand over her face, pushing the hair away and rubbing at her forehead and temples. “Yeah,” she says, offering him a faint smile. “Jus’ gimme like 45 minutes to shower an’ get some clothes on.”

His cheeks become rounder, the crinkles at his eyes deepen, and he seeks out and squeezes the hand atop her thigh. “Brilliant!” he announces, and practically leaps to his feet.

He didn’t sleep last night, Rose can tell. Probably not for the past three or four, if she’s being honest with herself—he’s only ever this manic in the morning when he’s been up alone for hours with nothing and no one but himself. The shadows under his eyes aren’t deep enough for him to have been doing that for any longer than half a week.

Of course he hasn’t been by himself, not with that omnipresent hum in his mind, but even though he knows she might sense his fatigue, he is not about to provide her with the true explanation as to why. Rose does not know the full extent of his connection with the Master, and he is more than content to keep it that way.

“Oi!” she calls, stopping him just as he is about to step into the hall. He turns his head, perplexed. “You’re makin’ the food then,” she says. “An’ no banana-sardine… things. Make somethin’ normal, like ham an’ cheese.” She thinks for a moment. “An’ no raizel-berry pie. I didn’t half get sick last time.”

By sick she actually means completely pissed, but since both of them know this, she sees no reason to belabor the point.

Still partially in her room, partially out, his body all twisted round to see her, the Doctor’s face is strangely dark. Slowly he turns and crosses his arms, and only now does she realize that he is still wearing one of the blue suits. He has never gone this long in his second-favorite, and she wonders whether he’ll ever wear the brown one again.

“That’s a very steep order, Miss Tyler,” he tells her somberly. “A pie without raizel berries is incredibly hard to come by nowadays. We may need to make special preparations.”

“Oh really?” she says, trailing her fingers back and forth across the surface of the purple comforter. She leans back against the pillows. “What sort o’ preparations?”

By the time they get out of her shower, much longer than forty-five minutes have elapsed. Rose almost has to kick him to get his bony arse out of her bathroom so that she can blow-dry her hair. Then, sitting on the edge of the instant-drying tub, her fingers and a brush running absently through the blond strands, she imagines all the places she could be getting ready for now: beaches and palaces, bazaars and pirate ships, Egypt and landscapes she has never heard of and would never be able to fully describe.

Not that they ever really knew where they were going beforehand, but she grew to love that, the uncertainty followed by mud-stains and chipped nails and bizarre after-tastes. Even the charred hair became somewhat less of a nuisance, though the fire-resistant shampoo might have had something to do with that.

Never the blood or death, though. No, Rose never grew fond of that. She never even grew used to that.

But that was the risk of traveling with the Doctor—that you couldn’t save some people, that one day maybe you wouldn’t even be able to save yourself. That was something she accepted on her very first trip with him, back when the sun blazed against the doors above her head, back when her very first plea for the Doctor to help resulted in snapped skin and half-bleached blood scattered across a platform of those still rich and those now dead.

And as she knew then and as she knows now, it was worth it. Every time a new creature, a new _person_ , told her its story, every time the Doctor took her hand and ran with her through the stars, it had never been more worth it.

Now the only talking she does is with a Time Lord or on the phone. Now the only running she does is through hallways or on the treadmill. Now she barely has him.

Rose clicks off the dryer and walks to the sink, examining her hair in the condensation-resistant mirror. Blond and twirling, mostly dry, tumbling down nearly to her shoulders with a bit too much body. With quick jerks of her brush she smoothes out the strands, preparing for the hairspray. For the first time since her return, she pays little if any attention to this daily routine.

He’s taking her to see the start of her solar system today, she reminds herself, her _solar system_. How amazing, how absolutely mind-blowing, is that?

The Doctor is being so sweet and thoughtful and they’re having a bloody picnic while watching her solar system form out of rocks and dust and blind luck, just everyday stuff coming together to create planets, some of which will one day nurture life. She should be grateful, she should be ecstatic and throwing potential outfits around the room while bouncing around to some new pop song, she should be as contented as a kitten-person beneath the Christmas tree, boggling at all the really big boxes while licking away at the cream.

She should be satisfied.

Rose gets dressed, a blue low-cut top and jeans that used to be too small for her but now show off her bum. Walking to the console room, she realizes she and the Doctor will just about match and she smiles.

The way he looks when she arrives—standing there in his blue suit, arms crossed, his body still and lean in front of the still-closed doors as he waits for her—reminds her just how much she wishes they never matched, not ever. With every ounce of herself she wishes that nothing so terrible had ever happened to her Doctor that it would bring him to avoid his once-second skin for so long.

“So how do I look?” she asks, offering him a twirl as she approaches. She’s got her favorite pair of thick heels on, an almost forgotten pleasure, and her freshly blond hair bounces around her neck in stylized waves. “Not bad for some alien lump jumping on me in the morning, is it?”

“Didn’t see you complaining,” he counters.

She rolls her eyes to hide her blush and smile, then gives him a peck on the lips. Looking more than a little smug, the Doctor opens the doors, revealing the blackness that will soon become her very own corner of the universe. They sit.

The Doctor holds out a blue wicker basket, its odor of hot bread and sugar drifting closer and beyond, out into the developing cosmos before them. “Cinnamon roll?”

Just over fifty minutes later, the Doctor has gone to be with the Master. The TARDIS doors still open, Rose watches craters form along the surface of Venus, specks of iron and coal flicking off like dust beneath the orange-yellow glare of the sun. She thinks of that siren-star the Doctor took her to see less than two weeks ago. She wonders how many ships’ captains found themselves caught, how many crewmembers found themselves trapped, until that sun burnt them all into ash.

~*~*~*~*

Early that evening Rose brings the Master supper, as she now does every day. In her right hand is a bright orange tray with a microwavable turkey dinner and a granola bar, in her left a bottle of water—she rethought the flat year-old Pepsi as she was leaving the kitchen. All in all, she thinks, she is being more than generous.

Rose’s slippers are nearly silent against the floor as she approaches, and steadily the voice she recognizes as the Doctor’s morphs into language, the translation beginning perhaps a bit sooner than its faintness should allow.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” the Doctor is saying. “I reversed a paradox. I restored the time lines. That’s it.”

“And sent the future of the human race back to the end of the universe,” the Master responds. “Now whatever could’ve happened to them there? Oh, I know. They die, every single one of them. Every man, every woman, every child—”

“They weren’t children anymore.”

“No? What were they, puppies? Monsters? Your own homicidal creations? Not pretty enough for you anymore? And here I thought you were the Doctor, the Time Lord every poor struggling little weakling could rely on, not someone who abandoned his precious little humans they moment they—”

“Sorry,” Rose says, rounding the corner as quickly as she can, “am I interrupting?”

The Doctor stands just inches from the barrier, leaning in with one hand braced against the wall. She catches a single glance before he straightens, hands flying to his sides, head jerking in her direction. Like a little boy caught looking through his father’s wallet, he stares at her with eyes wide, body perfectly still. For a moment Rose pauses, staring back.

Though she cannot yet see him, the Master also stands close to that doorway, the electric aura of the barrier rustling along the front of his shirt. The Doctor has not warned him to take a step back even once.

Crossing his arms, still in his suit, the Master shifts his weight to his left leg and rolls his eyes. “Yes, do run away, Doctor,” he says. “Mummy’s here.” He looks over at her and, once she has come close enough, very obviously surveys her body. He turns back to the Doctor. “A bit Oedipal of you, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” Rose snaps. She does not waste another moment before closing the distance between herself and the Doctor. Quietly she asks him, “You all right?”

Sensing the Master’s smirk, his proximity, and both sets of eyes fixed on him, the Doctor opens his mouth but says nothing. His hand slips to the back of his neck. “Yes, fine, I’m fine,” he tells her. “Brilliant, _molto bene_. What about you? What’re you, um…”

It is at this point that her right arm drifts slightly upward and he notices the obvious: the musk of turkey and gravy steaming out from the very noticeable plastic-covered meal in her right hand.

“Feeding the dog,” Rose jokes, her voice too light, her smile too forced, for the comment to be truly hostile. Even though it is actually earlier than when she usually brings the Master dinner, she explains, “It’s late.”

“Ouch,” the Master quips. “That hurt.”

“Ah,” the Doctor says. “Well, I can do that.” He brings his hand down from his neck and reaches forward with the other arm, but stops before he even reaches the tray. “You don’t have to…”

Rose resists the urge to roll her eyes. She resists quite a few choice phrases that run through her head, only half of them directed towards the Master. “Doctor. I can do it. ‘S not a big deal. I’ve been bringing him dinner since we left.”

After a brief hesitation, the Doctor nods and steps back. Too stiffly, his arms stick out of his pockets. His eyes are narrowed, and he has practically stopped blinking.

Although she cannot quite manage a smile, she gives him what she hopes is a firm and reassuring look before turning to face the cell where the Master stands, as close to the exit as she has ever seen him, watching her like an impatient father. She moves the short distance forward and he uncrosses his arms. Briefly she imagines chucking the steaming supper at his head and wonders how she ever thought letting him out would be a good—much less _safe_ —idea.

Just as she bends down to slide his supper over, the Master speaks.

“Rose.”

It is not that he uses her name. It is not even that he does so at this moment. What makes Rose pause is the _way_ in which the Master calls her, like Shareen or Martha or even the Doctor might, like the word has some value beyond its availability for scorn. He says “Rose” like the name of an equal, like she is a person and not some clever but annoying Chihuahua. Like she matters.

This sudden acknowledgement, it causes her to stop. To stop and straighten and look at him once more.

The Master’s eyes are very very brown.

The Doctor’s are too, of course, and hers as well, but those seem shallow somehow, bits of reflective tissue that lead nowhere. The Master’s gaze seems richer, a brown that is more like planets, like cocoa and the thickness of cake, like mud and sinkholes and the dirt that forms the Earth. Suddenly Rose finds it very difficult to blink.

The Master is holding out his hands.

“Do… hand it to me,” the Master tells her, his voice low. “I’m so old now, and I get so tired of constantly bending over.”

A smirk flashes across his lips, but if the Doctor spots it, she does not.

For some reason Rose knows this is a bad idea. If the Master wants something, the only intelligent thing to do is to want something else. It did not take a year walking a desolated Earth to realize that.

But, no matter the danger he poses, could pose, she just can’t see what he could do to her if she hands him his food, not with that barrier in place. All she has to do is reach up and pass him the tray with her right hand, the bottle with her left. Then he’ll take the tray, gently, he’ll spill his food otherwise, and take the bottle at the same time. His fingers will slide by hers to take hold of the plastic—no, not his fingers, she has to hold the end, the _end_ , why… because no crossing, no crossing that barrier—and then the exchange will be done.

She’ll be here, he’ll be there, each of them on opposite sides of an invisible wall. Handing him his dinner, sliding it across the floor, what’s the difference? Either way is perfectly safe.

Rose sees those eyes, so like the Doctor’s and so like her own but somehow more interesting, more inviting. It’s almost comical, the way she never noticed his eyes before, but she doesn’t even smile, hardly even wonders why he’s so charismatic all of a sudden. She is far too busy making a decision.

The Master just wants his food handed to him. Not that he deserves it, of course not, but it’s not that big a deal, not so dangerous. Honestly, it hardly bears thinking about.

As a test, Rose holds out the bottle first. The Master takes hold of the bottom end, waiting for her to let go before pulling it the rest of the way into his cell. She looks down at the motion, then back up. His face, those eyes. A smile, and he places the water bottle into his pants pocket. He holds out both hands this time and she holds out the tray, allowing most of it through the barrier. For convenience, she grips it with both hands. The Master reaches up and takes hold, also with both hands.

He jerks. Hard. She still clings to the tray.

Rose stumbles forward. Falling. Her grip tightens, hands have the sense to let go but too late.

Falling.

She’s slipping forward, legs like powder, mind not much better. Hands free but she's falling forward, right toward the Master.

The bristle of electricity, the brief resistance of the barrier, static on her skin—

The Doctor grabs her arms and pulls her back. Her feet stutter against the floor, toothpicks on ice. Finally she gasps and shakes out her head, letting herself collapse against his chest.

“Rose!” The Doctor’s voice, familiar and urgent and too damn loud at her ear. His fingers dig into her arms, her own weight making the pressure almost painful. She stands, feet press down against the ground, support her.

Keeps shaking her head, hand to forehead, eyes scrunched shut.

The Doctor again. “Rose, are you all right?”

Her eyelids part and Rose straightens, away from his torso. The Doctor’s hands linger on her arms, slip millimeters away. The Master watches with a smile no prisoner should have, and the moment he spots her focused glare, his lips part into a leer of sharp white teeth. The grin of a wolf who has never known the golden song of the Vortex, has never known Time’s beauty but only the merciless tempo beneath.

“Shame,” the Master says, his eyes meeting hers. There she sees a rather boring sewage-brown. “Still, better luck next time.”

“What next time?” Rose manages. She puts a hand to the side of her face, brushes the hair behind her ear. Her skin is hot, sticky. “There won’t even be a first time, ‘cept in your perverted fantasies.”

The Master’s eyes narrow. His leer has not changed.

“No. Those are much more fun.”

“Right. This conversation ends right now.”

The Doctor’s hand is on her arm again, the left one, and then he is beside her but slightly in front, his shoulder and arm blotting out the Master’s view of her side. Firmly but gently he seizes her upper arms, his eyes now boring into hers, his back to the cell. Rose allows her gaze to slip from the Master—how could she have been so _stupid_?—to him.

Not bothering with casualness or even quiet, the Doctor says, “Rose, I need you to go to the console room for me. Just… check on things. Gravitic anomalizer, fuel level, stability. I’ll meet you there.” He brings his chin up, shifts his body so that he can see the doorway over his shoulder. “Master—”

“Yes, do skedaddle like a good little girl,” the Master says. “Give the men their privacy. To, well, you know.”

Rose can see every twitch of the Masters lips, his brow. It is quite obvious when he winks.

The Doctor doesn’t even bother glaring over his shoulder. His attention is focused on Rose—her safety, his own anger at what the Master did to her, and getting her far far away.

Bringing her attention back to the Time Lord she loves, Rose reaches up, placing her hand atop his. The tendons tense, then relax, in her grasp.

“Come with me, Doctor,” she says, willing to do anything, say anything, just to get him out of here. Because if the Master can have this effect on her, when she distrusts his every step, his every eye-blink, what can he do to the Doctor? What can he do to a man who actually bothers to argue back? “I’ll have _no_ clue what I’m lookin’ at unless you’re there to help. Might even set the TARDIS on fire.”

She forces a thin smile, the closest she can get to a laugh. Bends her neck coyly, the closest she can get to flirting.

Suddenly serious, she says, “Let’s just go.”

For several long moments the Doctor debates, his eyes fixed on hers, the hold on her arms loosening.

But when his hands drop, severing all contact, they all know what choice he has made.

“Rose, I’ll meet you there,” he says. “Should only take a few minutes.”

Still she does not move. Her body remains just inches from his, the warmth of her on his palms, her gaze continuing to penetrate. There is no hypnotic effect here, no coercion; Rose is human, and all she has are her very human worries and a simple plea.

 _Come with me_.

“Please, Rose,” he says, his voice suddenly quiet and raw even beneath the control he forces onto the syllables, smoothing them out, eliminating the cracks that would betray his fear. He takes her hand and squeezes it so tightly that his grip, unusually warm, is almost painful. “Please. Go.”

“Oh yes, _please_ ,” the Master echoes. “ _Please_. The Doctor and I do so love our time alone.”

This time Rose hardly glances over. Her eyes do not leave the Doctor’s face, so beseeching, so desperate, and she knows she can’t say no. She can’t resist the Doctor, not when he looks so broken, so needing of her to say yes. Not even when she knows it would be better to knock him unconscious and drag him from this hallway, possibly forever.

She takes a step back. “Two minutes,” she tells him, and then turns to the Master. “And one wrong word outta you and I swear to _God_ you will regret it.”

Before her resolve leaves her, Rose turns around and walks very quickly away.

~*~*~*~

Far longer than two minutes later she stands at the console, her hand resting by the base of the temporal brake, the bumps and veins of her wrist standing out starkly against her own skin. When the Doctor enters he halts at the doorway and watches her for several long moments. Then, finally, he moves forward. He takes a seat on the worn yellow jump seat and squeezes the cushion with both hands. He crosses his arms and very slightly leans back. He waits for her to speak because he has no idea what to say.

Rose’s fingers pause on the corner of a large button. She looks at him and pulls her hand back until it rests on the very edge of the controls.

“How often does he talk to you like that?” she asks.

The Doctor does not answer, which, she supposes, is answer enough.

“Today was the first day he tried anything,” she says. She watches her own fingers flex against the console, the wrinkles at the joints deepening. “He’s not usually like that. He’s usually just… really still. Really annoying but really still.” She brings her head up, catching a glimpse of hair that tumbles over itself, some standing on end and the rest matted. As if he’s been running his hands through it the entire walk over here—which, she supposes, is possible. The moment he looks up she tells him, “He’s not gonna get me if you look away.”

“’Course not,” he answers, too quickly. “You can handle him just fine.”

Rose wants to argue the point, insist that she can, that she managed on her own for a year as billions around her died, that he doesn’t need to worry over her every breath and step. After what happened today, though, after the Master manipulated her so easily ( _and what if the Doctor hadn’t been there to stop him?_ ), the evidence does not seem to be in her favor, and she is still far too shaken for the words not to feel like a lie.

So she addresses something else that lingers, something that has to be said. “Doctor, what he said… you know it’s not true. What happened to the Toclafane, ‘s not your fault.”

At first the Doctor doesn’t give a single indication that he has heard her—he doesn’t look away, doesn’t cringe, doesn’t tense. His fingers remain flat against his arms.

Then his hands fist, and he lets his head fall. “I should’ve helped them.”

“An’ would that‘ve been before or after they slaughtered half the human race?”

The Doctor’s head jerks back up, his face as dark and flat as she has ever seen it. “Before.”

“Well then you did.” Rose pulls her hand from the console and takes a step towards him. “You did everything you could to help the humans we found, you got that footprint thing working _and_ you got their rocket off the ground. An’ no matter how… how badly it all turned out, you got ‘em all to Utopia, the one place they wanted to go.” She takes a breath, willing her next words to come out strong and firm, to leave her lips with the same power as his name did just weeks ago. “Doctor, you did everything you could.”

“Utopia,” he murmurs. He shakes his head. “’No place.’ I should’ve checked.”

“We were a bit busy,” Rose reminds him. “Bloke in the next room gave us one hell of a run-around.”

He doesn’t even look up, the stillness in his body mirroring the well of despair Rose knows lies within. Her finger curl against her leg, newly grown nails scratching along the fabric. She makes no further move toward him.

“Doctor, we’re in a time machine. We can go right now an’ save them, can’t we? Before they were spheres or once we fix the spheres, make ‘em more sane. Then we can take all those people back in time to some planet. I know you’re not s’posed to mess with history but ‘s not like there’s much of it at the end of everything. Unless it violates some rule or something, why not?”

For a moment there is silence, and she allows herself to hope.

“It does.”

Rose whirls her head away, hair sweeping across the space between them until it is all he can see of her face. She takes a step forward and latches onto the lever, squeezes it until her knuckles turn white. She hits the side of it, the metal shuddering with the impact. The Doctor hears but says nothing; this is a lesson she has to come to terms with on her own, perhaps repeatedly. Because for every brand new situation, for every time when there might be a loophole he has not told her about, she must accept the universe’s arbitrary cruelties all over again.

Of course it does, Rose thinks. Of _course_ it does. Of course there’s some rule they can’t break just to save a few million lives, because the universe just doesn’t care. Even at its end it has to take everything, brave or young or terrified, little boys who dream of diamonds or the parents who cut off chunks of themselves just to hide away in apathy and metal. Parents who cut up their children because it’s what they believe should happen when nothing matters, nothing at all.

The universe couldn’t care less who it snuffs out with its passing, and time carries on without pause.

And far be it for the Doctor to forgive himself for something he never could have changed. No, he has to carry the weight of the end of everything on his shoulders too, and even with the truth she cannot help him to stop hurting. No matter what she does, a kiss to the temple or her fingers woven through his or cold hard facts about the inevitability of it all, the Doctor will still take on the burden of every single one of those who fled into childhood, every single one of those who slaughtered those they should never have even remembered, every single one of those sent back after everything was put right. Sent back to pine for killing, and die.

And if it tears her apart, if those murderers’ fates makes even her chest ache, then what must it be doing to him?

Rose turns in his direction. She pushes her hair back. “I’m sorry.”

The Doctor sits up. His gaze is far away. “That’s the thing about sorries, Rose. They can’t bring back the dead.”

“But that’s just it!” Refusing to give up she strides toward him, hands spread wide. “You didn’t make the universe end, you didn’t _kill_ anyone. Just ‘cause you cleaned up the Master’s mess after he killed millions of people does _not_ make you the bad guy!”

He would like to believe her, of course he would, but after finding himself responsible for patching time’s fractures so many times, he knows better than that. He hunches his shoulders and looks straight ahead.

Unable to see him so defeated, Rose closes the distance between them and sits down on the jump seat. She takes hold of his hand and brings it to lie between them, skin-to-skin in the space where they are apart. Leaning her shoulder against his arm, she runs a thumb across his knuckles and waits.

The Doctor has never been one for long silences, and even more so, although he knows it’s nearly impossible, he yearns to make her understand. This is Rose, the one who helped him rediscover that the universe was not a snarl of sacrifice and death, who gave her life for him until he gave it back, who walked a devastated Earth with Martha with nothing to hold onto but his promise that he could fix it all.

Even now, when he harbors the man who killed half her species and enslaved the rest, she stays.

He owes her, and for both their sakes he needs her to see why he can’t just let all this guilt, let the Master, go.

“He’s a Time Lord, Rose,” the Doctor says. She turns to look at him and he looks back, willing her to think like a Time Lord might, seeing the breadth of further meaning behind every word. “That makes him my responsibility.”

This Rose has heard many times before.

“What,” she says, “an’ that makes every word he says the gospel truth?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

The Doctor takes a deep breath, attempting to put what he wants to say into words while keeping the rest—their past, the War—far away. Attempting to tell her what he can of the truth.

Speaking with care, he says, “It means what he does, I’m responsible for. It means when he talks, I listen. ‘Cause if I don’t do that, if I let my guard down just for _one second_ , then one day when I’m not looking or when he’s bored, he’ll escape. He’ll be gone with you or the TARDIS or both, an’ he will kill or enslave planet after planet, and _I_ will have allowed that to happen.

“You saw what he did to the Earth, Rose. Elected to Prime Minister and then ruling the planet, about to conquer the universe, in just two and a half years. Picture him with eternity at his disposal, Rose. Picture him with this ship and all of its technology.” Picture him with Rose, when the Doctor would have to choose between her and the universe to stop him. “I can’t let that happen.”

Rose does picture every one of those scenarios, and she has never been more grateful that the Doctor cannot casually read her mind. Because she can’t help but think, then why not kill the Master to save everything and everyone else?

“You can’t control what he does, Doctor,” she tells him. “No one can. If you could, this past year never would’ve happened.”

The final syllable has hardly left her lips before she regrets the last sentence, realizing she has probably just reminded him of his firm belief that he should have been able to prevent it all somehow, from Lucy Saxon to the countdown. No matter how much he wishes that were possible, however, the Doctor is not an idiot; once the Master escaped, he was always going to get some measure of victory. What the Doctor should have done was stopped it sooner, before the activation of the Paradox Machine, before the Year That Never Was.

“I’m not tellin’ you to let him go, Doctor,” Rose says. “Really, I’m not. He’s… he’s a Time Lord, he’s too important to you, I get that. But if he’s this dangerous, if you think he could do that much damage… then maybe he’s not the best person to keep around. At least, not like this.”

Although she cannot think of a single realistic way of accomplishing that short of killing their current passenger, she neither takes back the statement nor adds to it. It is the truth.

The Doctor’s hand is very still. “He’s staying Rose.”

A pause, a silence of tense understanding. Quietly Rose responds, “I know.”

And she has known, from the moment Martha ran to them panicked over a fob watch, the minute Harold Saxon’s voice spoke to them from within the TARDIS, the split-second in which Jack spotted Lucy Saxon with that gun. She has known, and though she hates it, she has accepted it. She has accepted the Master’s presence if not the Master himself, but with that the case then what she really wants to know, what she needs to know, is why.

The Master is the only other Time Lord still alive—Rose gets that, gets it enough to know that she will never be able to understand just how deeply that wound festers or how thoroughly the Master provides a balm. Sometimes he prods at it, pours salt into it, tears into it with all the fervor a pissed off psychopath can call up, but at the same time his very existence soothes it. Rose _gets_ that.

What she doesn’t get, what she doesn’t _know_ , is whether that’s all. What she wants to ask is whether the Master told her the truth on that first day, and whether “friends” holds a definition closer to Jack’s than her own.

She wants to ask that, but she can’t. Instead she says, “How long’ve you known him, anyway?”

The Doctor leans back, his surprise evident.

“It’s a simple question. You said you were friends, yeah? For how long?”

It takes him a moment to answer.

“A while.”

Frustrated, she stands, ripping herself away from him. Once she is near the ramp to the outer doors, far from him and the console, she whirls around. “Doctor, you’ve gotta give me something. How long’ve you known him, how old were you when you met, what planets did you visit together, why… why him? Something.”

“It was a long time ago, Rose,” he answers, and it is the most he can tell her without leaping into yet another pit he would much rather avoid. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Rose stares at him and her mind is devoid of any more questions. It is devoid of pleas, arguments, even patience. All she can do is watch him sit there, gripping the seat until he stands and stuffs his hands in his pockets. Until he makes himself as closed off as a lockbox, the strangely vulnerable but distant Time Lord who determines when conversations begin, and when they end.

And maybe she could have accepted that a year ago, maybe she could have walked away and given him his space and then laughed with him the very next day, exploring and holding his hand as they ran from robots and bargained with fairies. A year ago maybe she would have let him feed her scraps of information, but that was before her mother’s sobs at Bad Wolf Bay, that was before Japan, that was before the hours she spent scrubbing the blood of a butchered friend off her arms.

Rose has seen what blindly accepting the Doctor’s choices can do, and though she loves him and though she hates to hurt him, allowing this silence to linger between them is not something she is sure she can endure.

Looking down she takes a breath, then another, another. The oxygen rushes through her bloodstream and she tries to force it to spread some sort of calm with it. To make herself step back and think about this, to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It works about as well as her questioning did.

Nodding to herself, she looks back up at the Doctor. “Fine, don’t talk about it,” she says. “Maybe I’ll just listen in next time the Master laughs at you for blowin’ up your own planet.”

Every muscle in her body burning, Rose turns from the Doctor and walks away. Only once she has gone through hallways, down steps, past doors and archways, does the smog of fury and frustration leave her. Only then does she realize what she has said.

Rose sprints back, runs so fast her palms and forearms bruise against corners, so fast she almost gets lost. But by the time she gets back to the console room, the Doctor is gone.


End file.
